Time's Seasons Saga: Growing Pains
by Sinister Scribe
Summary: Second in series. Bill and Laura adjust to the events of Bad Blood, Colton and Edric work things out a little, Billy makes a reappearance and Lee gets his face broken. Rated for language and UST.
1. Chapter 1

**Okies, here we are with the second installment. I'm glad nobody was like 'WTF you doing making them younger??' coz i thought at least one person would object. :D**

Anyways, this is part two, another five chapter story. This first chapter is more to establish what's changed and how exactly. I realised after i'd written this chapter that Bill and Laura weren't in it all that much, but fear not, there's plenty more of them in the chapters to come.

And they get to see more of each other too *nudge nudge-wink wink*

Enjoy. Reviews are love.

**Chapter 1: Well, THAT'S Different**

"Colton, I'm not continuing this conversation with your ass." Edric told Colton's rear end.

A devious little chuckle echoed from within the depths of the_…thing_ she had been working on for the past couple of days. Apparently it was going to be very useful, though useful at what, everybody had yet to figure out. At the moment she was hooked over the lip of the thing's hatch with her torso, arms and head ensconced inside. Edric had been trying to have a conversation with her.

Unsuccessfully, it might be added.

Something oddly shaped and mechanical was tossed out of the machine over Colton's shoulder and her hand appeared after it.

"Pass me the sonic screwdriver will you?" She grasped at thin air until Edric rolled his eyes and passed her the small silver tool.

"Thank you!" Her voice sounded tinny and echoed faintly from within the depths of the machine.

"You can't put this off forever, you know." Despite his promise not to, Edric continued the conversation with her backside. It was a very fine backside, he was man enough to admit, but that didn't mean he was going to let her know that any time soon.

"Don't have to." She wriggled her hips and squirmed a little further into the machine. Edric firmly looked away from what that movement did to her slim curves. "Just have to put it off long enough for you to get fed up waiting for me to do it and end up doing it yourself." She grunted and slipped an extra couple of inches inside. "C'mere ya naughty plug!" She squirmed again and there was a clicking sound from inside the cavernous body of the hodge-podge invention.

Colton was still for a moment.

Edric arched an eyebrow at her now (oddly) perplexed looking ass. How anyone's ass could look perplexed, he didn't know, but if anybody could manage it, it was Colton.

"Hmm." She ruminated and he figured it out.

"You're stuck, aren't you."

"I am _not_ stuck. Geniuses do not get stuck." She was quiet a moment further. "Though I may be slightly puzzled as how exactly I am to extricate myself from--yipe!"

Edric had solved both their problems by reaching into the machine, grabbing her by the hips and bodily hauling her out of it. He held her in one of his massive arms like she was an unruly kitten whose behaviour he was curbing and she scowled at him.

"Yes, yes, you're a manly man and we're all very proud of you for it." She folded her arms over her chest. "Now put me down."

"Not until you listen to me."

"I'm all ears." She wriggled and kicked a little, trying to get free, but he just shifted his grip and held her up off the floor with ease. She huffed a sigh. "Okay, what?"

"We need to tell them."

"No we don't."

"They should at least have a little _warning._"

"Nobody ever warned us. I think it all went rather smoothly."

"We broke the lab."

"Well…we'll move some of the breakables then. Ship like this has got to have insurance."

"I don't think their policy includes the end of the world and…"

"FINE then! _You_ tell them if you're so anxious for them to be so bloody well informed." Colton wriggled harder until she tired herself again. It was one of the few advantages he had over her and Edric wasn't quite ready to give it up yet. "Can you stop being so obdurately…_dominant_ now?"

"You sure you want that?" His voice had lowered and Colton turned to look at him sharply.

"Edric." She warned.

"Dana." He grinned back at her.

Great, just great. NOW he was playful.

"Don't call me that."

"It's your name isn't it?" He flipped her around in his arms so fast that she squeaked in surprise and her front was crushed against his. She gripped his shoulders and her bare feet dangled several inches above the deck. Like this, they were eye to eye and very, very close to one another. He freed an arm to reach up and pull off her glasses. The entire shape of her face changed when freed from their shielding presence and he grinned showing off a lot of white teeth. She had a streak of grease at one temple, her hair was screwed back in that lopsided knot of hers and her cheeks looked flushed. "You know what? You're almost pretty like this."

She looked at him for a long frozen moment, her lips pressed together, and then patted his shoulder with a little more force than was friendly. "And you, Edric, I almost didn't recognise you this close." He tilted his head, she couldn't be serious…"It's amazing what a good embalmer can do." She wasn't.

"Ugh." He dropped her to the floor and she staggered backwards at the sudden move. She clattered into her machine and something convoluted and vaguely important looking fell of it with a clang. She turned to inspect the damage and then whipped back around to face Edric. Her eyes narrowed.

"C'est la guerre." She uttered in a low voice, stripping her white lab coat from her shoulders and whapping it to the floor.

"Oh, come on, Colton." Edric sighed. "There's no way that you can…"

_Clang!_

Edric reeled under the impact of the wrench to his temple. He staggered backwards several steps and was completely unprepared for over two hundred pounds of nanotech enhanced scientist slamming into his chest and toppling them both to the floor. He flipped them both until she was trapped under him, but underestimated her for the second time when it hadn't occurred to him that she would pull exactly the same move and end up straddling him on the cold steel floor. Her fist slammed into his jaw and cracked his head to the side.

"That's frakking delicate!" Her fist came down for another pass and his huge hand engulfed it easily and halted it mid swing.

"Unlike some things I could mention." He sneered around the blood trickling from his lip.

"Urgh!" She stood up, gripping him by the collar and smashing the heel of her hand into his nose, nearly crunching the cartilage under her hand, but pulling back at the last moment. It was then that he realised what this was all about. It wasn't about the machine or the insults or the way sharing the same breathing space with one another grated on them. It was simply that she was bored and tearing lumps out of each other was as good a way of passing the time as any.

"Gotta be the first time you've had a man between your legs for a while, huh?" He grinned at her, slightly lopsided because of the way his lip was swollen.

Her lips pursed, but her eyes were smiling. "Face it, Adama, you wouldn't know what to do with me even if you had me." Those same legs that he had been talking about seconds before tightened together and crushed his ribcage between them hard enough to make his bones creak.

"Frak!" He grunted in pain and at the challenge.

"Not in this lifetime." She answered back with a tight voice. Holding up like this, pinned between her thighs, while being almost enjoyable from his point of view, cost her a lot of effort.

"Thank Gods." He surged upwards, jamming his shoulder up between her legs hard enough to make her gasp, snagging one of her slim wrists with his hand and twisting it up behind her back to keep her balanced on his shoulder, his chin bumping against her hip. He rose to his full height, so high that she could reach up and touch one of the support beams over their heads.

Something that she didn't hesitate to use to her advantage. She gripped the beam with her free hand, smirked at him with a wicked baring of teeth and spurred her heels into his lower back and his belly in a hard kick like he was a stallion she wanted to gallop. He grunted and the breath huffed out of him. That kick had been hard enough to cave steel under it. His grip loosened on her wrist and she tore it free, her hand going to join its twin on the beam. She slipped her legs from his shoulder and bunched her arms twisting her body up and to the side in an oddly snakelike motion. Edric reached to catch her legs again and drag her down to his level and realised his mistake almost immediately.

But not before both of her legs whipped around with the entire weight of her body behind them and slammed heel first into his chest.

He was thrown backwards several feet and landed flat on his back. She swung again and landed on a neat crouch between his legs. Perilously close to something he'd really rather not have her land on.

"Had enough yet?" She smirked at him. Clearly enjoying herself.

Alright, she wanted the kid gloves off?

Fine by him.

His legs jack-knifed together, catching her delicate feet between his, and wrenched to the side. She toppled onto her hip and shoulder with a yelp. He pounced on her with a playful growl and they rolled across the floor, grappling for dominance. To anyone else, it would look like they were trying to kill each other. To them, this was kids' stuff. They weren't even close to cutting loose.

She finally succeeded in working her feet under them in a show of cat-like flexibility, and punting him off her chest with a huff of effort.

The sound of tearing fabric rent through the air and they were both back on their feet before they realised what had happened.

Colton looked down at her right arm. Her completely bare right arm. The entire sleeve of her purple and magenta pinstripe shirt (something she had went though hell to get, it should be pointed out) and part of the shoulder and collar were suddenly MIA. Her gaze swung over the floor and burned up the length of Edric's body to land on his guilty hand, clutching the torn fabric like it was some absurd little battle trophy.

"Favourite shirt!" She protested.

"_Only_ shirt!" He parodied back to her and wrinkled his nose to cover his smirk. "Smells like it too."

"It is SO on!"

"I'm all aquiver." He mocked her and waved the sleeve at her like a red flag to a bull.

It had the desired effect of having her rush him. Unfortunately he hadn't accounted for exactly how much she had liked that shirt. She sprinted at him and he dropped the rag in favour of readying himself for catching her and rolling to absorb her momentum. He lunged to meet her, arms swinging together and closing on empty air. It wasn't until he felt hands fist in the pant leg of his military sweats and the sound of yet more ripping fabric echoed through the room. She had dropped under his reach and scooted between his legs, catching his trouser leg on the way past and not stopping until she had slid way past him, pant leg still in hand.

He whirled to face her, sitting on the floor and waving the lower half of his pant leg at him with an evil little smile on her face.

She must have really liked that shirt.

He was on her before she could tear more clothing from him. He landed on top of her, forced the air from her lungs with the impact, clamped her arms to her sides with his own and slid across the floor with her. There, she had to give up now, her legs were squashed under him, her arms were immobilised. There was nothing she could- -

"Ow!" He reared back, the side of his neck throbbing from where she had bitten him. Blood was a flush on her lower lip and she grinned at him before swiping it away with her tongue. Her legs slid out from under him, clamped around his hips and twisted to the side as she heaved at his shoulders. She flipped him neatly on his back, fisted a hand in the front of his double tanks and ripped upwards, stripping away the material in a long swath that left the cobbled muscles of his abs and most of his chest bare. She quirked a smile at the view, before snapping the material against his face with a slap and scrambling off him. He snagged the back of her shirt and she twisted awkwardly to get out of it, ripping it clean off her back and revealing the deep blue lace thing she was calling a bra underneath.

"Well, THAT isn't military reg." He muttered. She turned to face him, while scampering backwards away from him, and revealed it to be almost completely see through on the front. Edric shook his head hard, feeling like she'd just clocked him with the wrench again.

"Civilian, sweetheart." She mocked gently and he launched himself after her. With a muffled 'eep' she dove under her machine and wiggled between the props to get to the other side. Edric took the simpler and shorter route of leaping over the thing, a jump no normal person could make, and landing over her as she crawled out from under it. She rolled onto her back, hair wild and cheeks flushed, one of his feet on either side of her shoulders.

She punched straight up.

Edric swore and twisted to the side to avoid having his tailbone crushed and facing the possibility of never fathering children.

Her fist connected with the steely muscle of his inner thigh hard enough to bruise and sent him toppling further. She flipped onto her front again and made to crawl away. He recovered himself and snagged her up off the floor with his normal arm around her waist. His metal arm went across her collar bone. The one she couldn't bite.

"Leggo!" She kicked wildly and squirmed like an eel. He held her tight and gave her a hard little shake in an attempt to get her to cry uncle. He should have known better. She was never doing what he thought she was doing. All the kicking and screaming was a distraction. She had used it to steer him to the work bench, and the pot of thick black engine grease she had been using to lubricate the mechanisms she was working on. She didn't hesitate to snatch it up and upend it all over them.

"Ew!" He nearly dropped her with his recoiling and greasy oil sludged down over his arms and chest as well as down over her front and back. Skin slid over skin and she slithered from his grip as slippery as a fish caught fresh from the river. She giggled to herself and took the rest of his tanks with her as she plopped to the floor. She slipped and slid her way away from him and waggled his oily clothes at him in a grinning challenge. She tossed it back to him and it slapped against his chest, splattering some oil up onto his cheek. He glared at her and wiped it away with exaggerated care before flicking it off his fingers with contempt.

"_Sure _you haven't had enough yet?" She looked at him with faux innocence.

"And admit defeat? An Adama is never beaten."

"First time for everything." She shot back.

"Not with you."

"I believe you said something similar about a hundred years ago. I won that time too." She looked too damn pleased with herself.

"You sure?"

Her brows flickered in an uncharacteristic show of doubt but the look was gone almost as soon as it had arrived.

"Of course." She planted her hands on her slim waist.

"A lot can change in a hundred years." He prowled his way towards her, careful not to slip on the oil.

"And there are some things that are constants in the universe." Her chin came up, daring him to refute it.

"Like me kicking your ass?" He smiled sweetly at her.

"Or me letting you think you have." She grinned feral. "Not the first time I've faked something around you."

That appeared to be too much for Edric to let slide and he launched himself at her like he had an FTL drive.

Shrieking a laugh, Colton danced out of the way and sprinted away from him to the other end of the barracks that they shared with Bill and Laura when they weren't having their numerous physicals. She could hear the low growl of Edric's impending wrath and couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up in her throat.

Gods, she did so love to rub him just the wrong way to make it feel right.

$inister $cribe

"Do you think they've killed each other yet?"

"Hmm?" Laura looked up at Bill's face and tried to look like a President that had not just been caught ogling the Fleet Admiral.

Not that anyone could blame her.

Bill, in the distinguished weathering of middle-age had been a compelling man to look at. He'd had a rugged look about him. A bearish build of strength that spoke of raw power under his belt (not that she was paying a lot of attention to areas south of the belt, that would be inappropriate and _irresponsible _for the President of the Twelve Colonies…Gods what a crock of frakking shit) and a stern, staid manner that had whispered of iron willed control.

Younger, in-his-prime, and to be perfectly honest, infinitely frakkable Bill was truly a sight to behold. Every time she glanced at him (okay, ogled) she thought (frequently, she did a lot of ogle-er-glancing) she was looking at a photograph of him from twenty years ago. Gone was the beating his face had taken from a lengthy and stressful career on the frontlines of the military, gone was the extra weight that age had brought him, even the stern cast to his features had lifted somewhat.

In their place was something infinitely more…just _more._ His face was lean, sharp slashing cheekbones, a strong jaw, inky black hair with the slightest curl that made her fingers itch to tangle in it and smooth bronze skin that was just begging to be colour tested all over his body to see if it was the exact same tone over every inch of him. There wasn't a spare scrap of flesh on him. Muscles bunched over muscles, rippling in interesting and hopelessly fascinating ways. He was still the same height, and his shoulders were still wide, but his hips were trimmer and he had a lean wolfish cast about him now rather than the grizzled bear she had known from a few days previously.

Gods, had it only been four days?

Four days since she had suffered unspeakable agonies, had her entire body turn into a blister that had threatened to suffocate her and then, literally, being torn out of her skin to be…what? Remade? Reborn? Reprogrammed?

She was still confused as to what exactly happened to them. It had all been explained to her by Colton and Edric of course and Cottle had tried to keep up, but the ramifications…the ripple effect from this would be huge. Not just for her and Bill personally, but the entire fleet too. How were they going to react? Were they going to reject their own leaders? In favour of who? Who was the best second choice to her and Bill?

"You okay? Stop worrying about the universe." He flashed her a grin. "One day at a time." His hand reached out and his fingers brushed over her knuckles in a shiver of contact.

They touched more now. Just to feel it. They were a lot more sensitive to everything now. Food tasted infinitely better. They could identify individual scents in cologne and ingredients in food. Colours were brighter and her eyesight was sharper than it had ever been. They both found themselves ensnared in a fascination with their surroundings like everything was brand new. It was intriguing and interesting. It was also frakking terrifying.

She curled her fingers and stroked his palm before forcing herself to release him. She smiled back at him as they walked along the cleared corridors back towards their quarters that they had been 'quarantined' in. It had been decided by all involved that Bill and Laura should be given time to adjust to their new situation before they were subjected to the gamut that the Fleet would no doubt put them through when they found out. Obviously some people knew. The guards, for example. that accompanied them everywhere lest they suddenly decide that they were Cylon sleeper agents. Something they had ordered themselves.

Not that the guards would be much of an obstacle. Laura found herself calculating exactly how easy it would be for her to take down the dozen man guard and caught herself with a mental shake.

So much had changed…

She glanced to her left, at the man at her side and was abruptly reminded that some things would always be the same though. Bill would always be the same.

She looked at him and tried to discern the most familiar of his features in his new-but-still-him face. His eyes. His eyes were still unfathomably dark, piercing and unreadable. His smile too. His rarely seen true smile, the one that showed dimples (she was a sucker for dimples, though she could be persuaded to nibble in a pinch). The one she went out of her way to have him share with her. His voice. It was still that deep gravel growl of his that sent shivers down the spine for all kinds of different reasons. He still laughed at the same jokes, still got pissed off at his physicals and impatient with tests. He still went slowly mad with being cooped up in commandeered guest quarters and kept away from his lair in CIC.

The core of him was still the same. He was still her Bill.

That made a lot of things a lot easier to handle knowing he was still there to be her anchor.

She really needed an anchor right now.

"Yes, it's just…"

"A total head-frak?"

She laughed at his choice of words. "To put it bluntly."

"Always best to." He followed her down the stairs and was careful not to warp the railing this time with his hands when he gripped it. Being strong enough to bend steel with a flex of his fingers was great in theory. Only in theory though. The practicalities of being unbelievably gentle with _everything_ were a bitch. Laura was suffering the same thing. She had inadvertently pulled more than one hatch clean off the wall because she was so used to throwing her entire weight behind it just to shift the reinforced steel doors. Bill had nearly cracked Saul's ribs the other day when he had hugged him to show that it really was the same Old Man under this kid's good looks. He didn't remember _ever _looking this good. His eyes skated to Laura.

Mind you, some people had looked good before and were now stunning in a jaw dropping fashion. The faint lines around her eyes had up and disappeared, she had lost weight so that her high cheekbones and the curve of her jaw lent her a sculpted appearance that would have not been out of place in the temples of Aphrodite. Her hair was _amazing_ in that must-touch-and-smell-at-the-soonest-opportunity kind of way. The colour and lustre much more defined. She looked less tired, less ravaged by the cancer. That was a brief shadow in his mind. Cottle was still trying to find out what this nanotech meant for the cancer and it hung over them like a guillotine. He subtly regarded her, noting her smile and the way it was making a much more frequent appearance on her striking face, down her body to pay homage to every lush curve and, of course, The Legs.

Legs such as those deserved a temple of their own and an entire order of worshippers. He'd start it if he had to. They could have robes and everything.

Bill shot a glare at the nearest guard who happened to be checking around The Legs for security threats a little too often. Eyes front was immediately in effect. Young Old Man was certainly a Creature With Whom One Does Not Frak.

"You were saying?"

Bill looked down at Laura. She had taken after Colton in her habit of going around in bare feet (despite his protests), it was pointless to wear heels with military sweats she'd said, and was now much more petite next to his, what felt like, hulking frame.

"Colton and Edric." He reminded himself abruptly. "Things seemed a little tense before we left."

"I'm sure they'll find a way to work it out." She looked like she was trying very hard not to smile.

"What?"

Her pale grey/green eyes rolled in a 'men!' expression and she turned to look at him with an arched brow.

"If you don't know, I'm not going to be the one to explain it to you." Her voice had dropped an octave or three and sounded like sex, straight up with no ice, just steam. Bill cleared his suddenly tight feeling throat as the Frak-me eyes were levelled with his own.

Oh, that wasn't fair.

"You think…the two of them…really?"

"I am NOT drawing you a diagram either, so you can forget it." She tossed her hair and he was momentarily distracted by the play of light over the glossy waves. He was never going to win an argument against her ever again if she kept this up. "Nowhere is it stated in the Pledge of Allegiance that I have to teach the Admiral of the Fleet about the facts of…"

"I get it!" He cut her off with the threat of imminent sniggering from the surrounding men. If she kept running rings around him like this, and if he kept letting her, he'd never be taken seriously ever again. "I just thought they were too different." He shoved his hands in his pockets and felt a momentary satisfaction when her eyes dipped below the drawstring of his pants for the briefest of moments.

"Opposites attract." She said absently. Dragging her eyes away. They had reached the guest quarters and one of their escort was opening the door just to make sure it actually stayed attached to the wall.

He liked the dragging. In fact, he had some dragging for himself in mind. Though it was distinctly more along the lines of him throwing her over his shoulder and dragging her off to…holy crap.

The barracks were quite effectively destroyed. It looked like a Caprican hurricane had passed through here. Beds were overturned, papers strewn over the floor from Colton's desk, one of the computers had met a crushed end against a wall, there were several dents in the walls, one warped support beam, three shattered lights and two bodies collapsed on the floor breathing hard.

"Stay here." Bill ordered the guard when they made to move inside. If he had learned one thing in the last couple of days, it was that only he and Laura were capable of taking on Edric and Colton if they ever decided to turn against them. They'd break anyone else in half with a flick of their wrist.

Bill overtook Laura, keeping himself between them and her, and picked his way carefully towards the epicentre of the wreckage. He stared at what he found and Laura poked her head around his shoulder and made a cut off sound that sounded somewhere between a gasp and a laugh.

Colton lay on her back on the floor, naked from the waist up aside from a blue lace bra that was missing one strap and nearly hanging off at the side. Half of her dark blue jeans were missing, only a thread of the waist band holding them on and it was fairly obvious that she'd coordinated her underwear to match that morning. Her naked leg was twisted to the side over her body and caught under Edric's as if she had kicked his feet out from under him. Which was what Bill had suspected had happened.

He heard Laura snort behind him and knew she was trying to stifle giggles.

Edric, if anything, looked worse than Colton did. He lay on his back, metal arm thrown up and over his eyes as he panted. His shirt had gone the way of the dodo, his pants were MIA except for the remains of a leg caught around his calf and ankle and Colton had hold of one side of his shorts, hanging from limp fingers.

Laura couldn't stop a yelp of laughter from escaping her and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it.

Both of them were breathing hard, looked dishevelled, exhausted and more than a little satisfied. Bill felt the beginnings of a smile tug at his lips and tried to fight it down. They were also covered in a charming cocktail of engine grease, blood and sweat.

"Been busy have we?" Bill spoke as best he could around the hysterical laughter that was trying to wrestle control of his vocal chords. Laura had already surrendered to it completely. Her hand gripping his shoulder in an attempt not to fall to the floor, clutching her ribs and laughing until she couldn't breathe anymore.

Edric shifted his shining clockwork arm and peered at Bill from behind his wrist joint. "Bill." He rocked his head in a nod of deference. "Madame President."

"Edric." Laura managed to greet in return with barely a quaver of laughter in her voice.

Colton cracked open one eye, then the other and then levered herself up onto her elbows, unaware of what the pose did to the remains of her bra. Bill felt Laura's glare on the back of his head when he didn't look away. Well, he wasn't looking at _that_ he was watching Colton's face. She was glancing about the wreckage with a small smile on her face that very closely resembled one which is usually worn after _another_ activity that involves being covered in sweat, upsetting the furniture and tearing off clothes. Though other people tended not to do that literally.

She pursed her lips and appeared to take stock of the situation and how it must have looked to those that had just walked in. She let her head loll back in order to meet Bill and Laura's gaze.

"So…" She said, then paused to suck on her split lip for a moment before turning back to them.

"You going to believe what you see, or what I tell you?"


	2. Chapter 2

**This ended up a little more philosophical than I would have liked at the start, but trying to change it would have thrown off the rest of the chapter methinkies.**

**I KNOW that I had Tory in the first installement, but I realised after trying to write her in more than one or two scenes was going to do my nut, so guess what? **

**BILLY'S BACK!!**

**The lil cutie that he is. **

**I hope u like the ending, not quite lust, but jealousy is a close second.**

**Reviews are love.**

**Chapter 2: Core Beliefs**

Laura lay awake staring at the ceiling.

As she had been doing for the last_ several_ hours.

She couldn't stop thinking about what she was now. What she had become. She was, essentially, a Cylon hybrid. The same as little Hera, the very girl she had sought to hide from her own parents and the rest of the fleet because…well, if she was honest with herself it was because she hated all things Cylon. Their very presence was an affront to all she believed in. All she held close to her heart. All she cherished.

And now she was one.

Frak.

She could hear Bill snoring softly a couple of racks down. Completely at ease with his new circumstances apparently. Laura scanned the warped support beam over her head and realised that the skinny Dana Colton had been the one to twist reinforced steel with her bare hands. Now Laura would be able to do the same thing. No human could do that. Did that make her less human? What made someone human?

Was it their spirit? Their emotions that made them human. Cylons felt emotion, or thought they did. So, following that train of thought, they would be classed as human too. But they weren't. They would never be human. They were programmed _machines_…but then, the human body was a machine too. Just a biological one and that brought her to her next point. If it wasn't a mental or spiritual thing that made one human, it must be a physical one. Was being human the frailty of the mortal body? If so then Bill, Colton, Edric and herself could no longer claim so much humanity and…

Laura sighed and scrubbed a hand over her face. These thoughts were running around and around in her skull like a rat trapped in a basket. The only thing she was succeeding in doing was giving herself a headache. She rolled over onto her side in the vain hope that a change in position would somehow stifle her brain process and allow her some sleep.

She saw the pale light of the lamp spilling over Colton sitting at the other end of the barracks on the low couch that had been put in to replace the one she and Edric had wrecked so gleefully earlier in the day.

Making her decision, Laura threw back the blanket that covered her and padded over to Colton. She hesitated when she saw Edric sprawled out on the couch beside Colton. The doctor's head lifted and a smile painted her lips.

"It's alright. He's dead to the world." She nodded to the cot opposite. "Have a seat and tell aunty Colton all about it."

Laura gave a wry smirk and did as she was told. She tucked her feet up under herself and leaned back against the cool bulkhead, thinking on how to phrase her first question.

"I won't disturb him?" She hedged instead.

"Not a chance." Colton snorted. "The man can, and has, slept through Cylon incursions."

Laura looked at the way Edric was lying. She hadn't realised it at first, but his head was pillowed on Colton's lap, he lay on his front so he could wrap his massive arms around her waist and he didn't appear to be in any great hurry to move away any time soon. What was more startling was the way Colton had her fingers entangled in his hair. She was stroking it back and away from his forehead, running her hand over his neck and shoulders like he was a particularly large and favoured cat before going back to his brow and starting all over again. Her other hand was occupied with the worksheet she was looking at and she seemed completely unaware of what she was doing.

"Must be a military thing." Laura said on a soft smile. It was odd to see this softer, hidden, side of Colton but it was somehow comforting. Surely something inhuman wouldn't or couldn't show such affection for another being?

"More like a man thing." Colton said absently. "You're questioning whether or not you're still human." Colton lifted her head and pierced Laura with her eyes that were, for once, without the shield of her heavy glasses. "Aren't you?"

Laura nodded.

"I've already been saved by them once. With my cancer. Hera, the hybrid baby, Baltar used her stem cells to form some kind of treatment that saved me." She studied her hands. She had told Colton about Hera a couple of days ago and the good Doctor had been only slightly less than apoplectic at the thought of denying a mother her child. It had taken Edric almost an hour to convince Colton that, no, she could not slap Laura over the head with something large and dense, like Bill. "Now, I've been saved by them again. Tiny little Cylons swimming through my blood. When do I stop being more human than Cylon? When does the line blur completely?"

Colton thought about it for a moment and Laura realised it must have been a truly difficult question to make Colton stop and think.

"Do you feel any less human than you did a week ago?"

"No."

"Do you feel a mad urge to plug yourself into the mains and try and wipe out the remainder of humanity?"

"No!"

"Do you _feel_ like a Cylon?"

"I don't know, what does being a Cylon feel like?"

"Why don't you ask one the next time you see one?"

Laura shot her a look. The airlock one.

"How can I still hate them though?" Laura blurted. "I mean, I'm so like them now, that would mean hating part of myself and…I don't want to do that."

"Ah…hate is a very human thing." Colton toyed with Edric's hair a little more. "Self-hate especially, but you're missing something fundamentally important." She looked back at Laura. "_You_ are not like a Cylon. _They_ are like us."

Laura frowned.

"We made them, Laura. We built and designed the bloody things and, by the Gods, we can find a way to destroy them. They are, after all, just machines. They don't _deserve _to live."

"Who are we to judge that? Just because your father designed the first ones? Just because we used them as technological slaves? Just because we were born? They can give birth. They can live. They can die."

"But they're not mortal and that's the real difference." Colton tilted her head. "Nothing is final for them. They've all got another chance. Endless chances. We have one. Sure, ours is much greater than the rest of humanity because we won't die of old age, but we can still be killed. We can still feel mortal fear and, when we die, we sure as hells stay dead." Colton heaved in a sigh. "They made themselves god-like and, in doing that, they can no-longer be human-like. You can't be both."

"That sounds a lot like some of the Scriptures." Laura gave a soft smile. "Is religion a purely human thing? They do believe in their one true God."

"Heh, my theories are proved by science just the same as an acolyte's are proved by the Scriptures." Colton smirked in her way. "Somebody, somewhere, wrote it all down at some point so it's got to be true. Humans love belief. Gives them an excuse to lord it over the other guy."

"You don't have much faith, do you Colton?" Laura looked at the other woman. "You believe in science, you recognise facts but that's _knowing_. Do you have faith in anything?"

"I have faith, if you want to call it that, in certain things. I have faith that science will always provide me an answer if I just look long and hard enough. I have faith that I can find a way to stop this war. Hells, I even have faith that, if I do, if we win, humans at large will still find something to bitch about."

"I don't think humanity's all that bad."

"Please, Laura, put more than two of us in a room together and we'll start thinking up ways to kill each other. It's human nature. Even after everything. After the carnage of the Twelve Colonies, after near extinction, have this little band of refugees calling themselves humanity ever shown a strength of unity? Have they ever banded together for anything less than mindless hate over something that is simply different?" Colton laughed softly. "What I have isn't lack of faith, it's realism."

"Sometimes faith can be better than realism. It can give you hope."

"Hope?" Colton tilted her head. "I wonder if you'll feel so hopeful once the mob turns against you, and they inevitably will, you and Bill are different now. True, no different from Edric and I, but different from the rest and that's what will matter to them."

"I'm suddenly not feeling very reassured." Laura spoke wryly. She had been thinking the same things. She knew that this…thing that had happened to her would most likely end her political career, possibly threaten Bill's admiralty as well. It was going to change everything, not just for her and Bill, but for everybody.

"If you wanted reassurances, you'd have woken Bill. You wanted the truth, unvarnished and straight as Dogtag Vodka, so you came to me."

Edric chose that moment to shift in his sleep and pull Colton closer to him. Colton wriggled a little and tilted her body to lean on the arm rest so that she could cushion him better. Laura smiled. It was easy to forget these two had spent most of their careers together, serving on the same Battlestar. They fought all the time, but Colton was giving a very accurate impression of actually caring for her companion.

"How long have you been together?" The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it and Colton looked at her sharply, almost guiltily.

"Sometimes it feels like we're not together at all." She confessed. "Other times it feels like there's this huge empty space without him and life as I know it would be…improbable." Colton had a very specific aversion to the word 'impossible'. "We've spent most of our very long and very odd lives mixed up with one another and I don't know if it's familiarity, habit or lack of a better option, but it looks like we're stuck with one another. Apparently no matter what." She gave a somewhat helpless shrug.

"Lack of a better option?" Laura smirked, many a woman would jump at the chance to be one of Edric Adama's options. "Well, you can't have Bill." The words were out of Laura's subconscious and into the air before she could do a thing about it. She looked up at Colton, completely mortified and saw Colton grinning like a cat with the cream.

"Really?"

"That's not…it didn't come out like it sounded." Laura back-pedalled furiously. "Bill's very much a military man. A stubborn ass. He'd drive you insane more than Edric does."

"Honey, you're not fooling anyone. Not me, not you and not Bill." Colton just grinned as if this was all amazingly amusing. "There's really very little point in hiding from it."

"Even if I did," Laura found herself saying and realised this was quite the wrong way to go about putting such rumours to rest but couldn't stop herself from speaking anyway. "We both have…_responsibilities _we can't just sweep them aside."

"Responsibilities? To who?"

"The Fleet. The President of the Twelve Colonies and the Fleet Admiral couldn't be seen to…"

"Don't be seen then." Colton shrugged a shoulder. "People already suspect you're going at it like horny greased weasels," Laura grimaced a little at that colourful image, "you might as well enjoy the benefits."

"There's a difference between suspicions and confirmations." Laura said quietly.

"You're a better woman than I, Madame President. If I had what you and Bill have, not just the blatantly obvious chemistry," Laura suffered a brief flash-fire of panic at that, "But the true friendship you have as well…there isn't a force in the known or unknown galaxy that could stop me from taking it."

Laura chose that moment to look very pointedly at Edric's death grip around Colton's waist and the way her fingers were tangled in his hair and stroking his shoulders.

"Leave that one well enough alone. Edric and I have never done anything the easy way and I'd be extremely disappointed if we were to start now." Colton said it with such finality that Laura decided I quick change of subject was on the cards.

"What were you two beating the frak out of each other over anyway?" Laura smiled. "Did you win?"

"Of course." Colton smirked. Like any other outcome had ever been an option!

"Difficult to tell." Laura mused.

"Well, I might have let him _think_ he was winning but he'll definitely never best me. It wouldn't do to let him think he was alpha male all the time."

Laura shared that smile. She and Bill had similar fights, admittedly, they didn't rearrange entire rooms when they did (though sometimes she felt like it) but she wasn't above pulling the Presidential Card just to get him to toe the line. A woman in a man's universe has to fight dirty after all.

"You're not going to tell me what it was about, are you?"

"Not tonight." Colton shook her head. "You won't have to deal with it for a couple of days yet. Deal with what's going on now and don't borrow worry."

"You're sure?" Not knowing was driving Laura a little bit nuts.

"Go to bed, Laura. Sleep for a while." She smiled. "Remember, family reunions tomorrow. Don't want to have baggy eyes for that, do you?"

"I'm not tired." Laura tried to ignore how much that sounded like a child's protestation.

"Hey, you might not need as much sleep as you used to, but you're not Wonder Woman yet." Colton reached up a bare toe and nudged at Laura's knee with it. "Off with ye."

Laura had to smile. She bid Colton goodnight and then prowled back to her bunk. She lay down, snuggled under the blanket and realised she was a lot more tired than she had thought.

She fell asleep listening to the rustle of Colton's reading and the gentle rhythm of Bill's breathing from two bunks away.

**$inister $cribe**

Laura sat watching Bill (something that was fast becoming a favourite sport of hers) as he drummed his heel against the floor and watched the hatch leading into the barracks with an intensity that would have been unnerving for any biological being to be under. Laura was quite certain that she was glad it wasn't aimed at _her_. The hatch, however, didn't seem to be bothered in the slightest.

They had been informed earlier that morning that Doc Cottle had finally declared them not contagious (much to the affront of Colton, who had told him the exact same thing DAYS ago) and that they would be allowed to see their nearest and dearest as soon as it could be arranged and they could be dragged in from their respective corners of the fleet. Kara and Lee were coming to see Bill, as Saul already knew what was going on and was babysitting the fleet. Billy was being shuttled over to see Laura and she was content to have her aide be the one to see her first like this.

Billy, aside from Bill, was the closest thing to family she had. She'd never had children (there was a thought, was she capable of having them now that she was 'young' again?) and adopting Billy as her son in all ways but blood had happened without her intention. Billy had been through everything with her and his loyalty was unfailing. A brief smile touched Laura's lips at the thought of how he would react to seeing her. She imagined a great deal of stammering would be had.

Her eyes skated back to Bill, still glaring at the hatch like his continued scowling would force it to open quicker.

"Bill."

He whipped his head around so fast she thought he might get whiplash.

"You say something?"

"Yes." She did her best to repress her smile. "You need to calm down, you're beginning to warp the chair." Her eyes dropped to the metal frame of the chair that his arms were folded over. He had turned it so the back was to his front and he could straddle it. Not a position that an admiral would adopt, but he looked every inch the cocky flyboy now, as she had no doubt that he had been. Probably a woman on every battlestar…Laura pushed that thought away before she began to warp her own chair. Bill looked guiltily down at his chair and unclenched his fingers. They were both becoming better at controlling their strength, that was still increasing as the days went by, but without conscious effort it was still easy to remove doors from walls and railings from ladders.

"I'm just…"

"Nervous?"

"Wary." He gave her a sharp look at supplying such a non-Military Regulation word for his behaviour.

She propped her elbow on the table and cupped her chin in her hand. She smiled at him with simplicity and amusement. She was in a good mood. Not for any particular reason, she just felt good. She didn't hurt anymore. Cottle had been reluctant to give her any diloxin treatments after the debacle with the nanotech and Colton had point blank told him not to bother as the nanotech would just break it down before it could do anything. All he would succeed in doing would be to make Laura feel ill for a couple of hours and put her in a really pissy mood. Laura had liked this turn of events just fine and had deemed it unnecessary for her to do anything more than smile and say 'Colton knows best' before hopping off the medical bench and disappearing out the door as fast as her bare feet could carry her. Cottle was still scanning her for any trace of her cancer but had so far come up with bupkiss. This, also, was something that Laura was supremely fine with. Cottle had warned her not to get her hopes up but she knew, already, that he wasn't going to find anything. Before, both the first and second time, she had _known_ about her cancer. Even if it wasn't consciously, she had known something was wrong. Now everything was right. She was better.

She just knew it.

"Stop it." He ordered her.

She arched a brow, one did not just _order_ the President of the Twelve Colonies to do anything. Especially when it threatened her good mood.

"Oh?" She straightened a little, folded her arms under her breasts and leant forward, knowing _exactly_ what such a position did to her now fabulously perky cleavage. "What am I doing?"

"Trying to, um…" His eyes betrayed him and dropped to study her figure. She grinned a Cheshire Cat grin. "Distract me." He finally finished. After much hard swallowing and a definite warping of the chair back.

"I thought you needed it." She smiled at him innocently. She was playing a dangerous game now. Just as when she'd been diagnosed with the cancer again, she'd felt she had nothing to lose. _Now_ she felt like she had every reason to celebrate. To reaffirm that she was well and truly alive.

The first thing that came to mind to celebrate life, of course, was the act of creating life. She had another little grin to herself. She had no desire to actually reproduce but she'd sure as hells like to practice her technique. Make sure she was still capable of pulling all the moves she'd been well practiced at in her youth.

If that meant a little torment and flirting for Bill, well…he'd just have to deal with that, wouldn't he?

"I don't see what you're so nervous about." Laura tossed her hair over her shoulder and turned to follow his gaze and do a little hatch frowning herself.

He glared at her out of the corner of his eye again and, again, the only response she could summon was a wicked little smile.

"You're still you, Bill. Admittedly you look…" She tilted in her chair to see around the table between them and look slowly up and down his body. "Different, but they'll see through that. Give one order in your growly voice and they'll know it's you."

"Growly voice?"

"Uh-huh, you know you sound like you've been gargling on a mixture of gravel and moonshine." She gave him another one of her smiles. "Touches all the right buttons, you know."

Bill's mouth fell open a little and it took him such a long moment to try and formulate a response that she had time to fit in one more gleeful little grin before the hatch that she had managed to distract him from, swung open and admitted the three completing members of their odd little family.

Bill jack-knifed upright so fast that he sent the chair tumbling across the metal floor. Laura gained her feet more gracefully and dragged her eyes away from Bill in time to tune into Lee mid-sentence.

"…you sure this is the right place? I was told I was getting to see my dad…" Lee was talking to the security detail and Kara was studying Edric and Colton in her quick and assessing way before turning and landing her gaze on Bill and Laura. She gave a tiny frown and then her eyes widened. Laura's smile returned (it seemed she couldn't banish it for a period of more than a few moments at a time) when Kara reached blindly behind her for Lee's shoulder, grabbing at his sleeve.

"Not now, Kara, seriously guys, where's my-ack!"

Kara had managed to grab a hold of Lee's chin and forcibly turn him around to look at Laura and Bill. Lee frowned, like he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him and then his brows raced up like they were trying to mate with his hairline. His mouth dropped open in an expression that startlingly like the one Bill had been wearing moments before.

"Holy frakking hells…" Lee muttered and the security guys took that as their cue to exit stage left.

"Hi." Bill said after a long moment.

"Hi?" Kara echoed and stepped hesitantly forward.

Billy poked his head around the other two, scanned the barracks and grinned like the little boy he was at heart when he spotted Laura. He was across the distance separating them before she could track it and he grabbed her up in a bear hug that lifted her clean off her feet so suddenly that she squeaked in surprise.

"Laura! You're better." Billy grinned at her and then realised what he was doing. He set her down and then stepped back hurriedly. "I mean…Madame President, good to see you looking so well." He smiled a little sheepishly and Laura couldn't help herself.

"You just take everything in your stride, don't you Billy?" She stepped forward again and hugged him tightly (but carefully) and kissed him on the cheek. He blushed furiously but looked absurdly pleased.

"Job requirement, Madame President." He ducked his head but couldn't stop smiling.

"Well, Old Man isn't exactly…fitting now, is it?" Laura turned back to see Kara cautiously poking at one of Bill's massive biceps. She resisted the urge to go and remove said offending finger…at the knuckle.

"Dad, you're…you're…yeah." Lee finally settled on.

"Glad to see your career as a politician has improved your vocabulary." Bill uttered wryly in his growling tone and both Lee and Kara stiffened. They looked at each other out of the corner of their eyes and nodded perfectly in unison, speaking at the same time.

"It's him."

Bill turned to look at Laura, who stood with a smug little smile on her face. She'd been right again. The sooner he accepted this was a constant of the universe, the easier his life was going to be.

"Madame President?!"

Lee was staring at her like she had grown another head.

"Mr Adama." She greeted him cordially. She could tolerate Lee, but not for long. She found him a little irritating after a while.

It seemed that forming words was a little beyond him at the moment and Bill didn't like the way his son was paying an inordinate amount of attention to The Legs…not to mention the rest of Laura. Had he not taught his sons that it was _rude_ to ogle? Not to mention that ogling your father's woman was an express no-no in all corners of the galaxy, not just the Twelve Colonies. There should be laws against it.

There would be if he ever found a way to get Laura to sign the documentation. Mind you, in the mood she'd been in the last couple of hours, she was more likely to refuse just to tease him with it.

"Lee," Bill's hand landed on his son's shoulder like a landslide. "A word." He dragged Lee a few feet away and was disheartened to realise that, as usual, his son was oblivious to the not-so-subtle signals from his father on when to frakking quit while he was marginally ahead. How his son thought he'd survive in the political pool (especially with the barracuda that he knew Laura could be when she chose to) was quite beyond him. Lee was now openly staring at Laura, who did nothing more than arch a brow at Bill and toss her hair over her shoulder when turning to make introductions between Billy, Kara, Colton and Edric.

"Dad, she's…wow."

"Lee." Bill didn't shout, but he spoke with such command in his tone that Lee automatically snapped to attention and whirled to face his father. You could take an Adama out of the military…

"Yeah?"

"She's your Commander In Chief. Stop. _Staring._"

Lee looked back over to Laura and rubbed a hand over his chin. He thrust his hands into his pockets.

"Well, dad, I gotta admit…" He smiled. "She can get commanding with me any day of the week."

Bill carefully assimilated this piece of information, calculated the appropriate response and, like all good military commanders, executed both order and action to complete the chain of events.

Lee didn't even see his father's fist before it crashed into his jaw and sent him reeling to the floor. He was unconscious before he hit the deck, sprawled out like he'd been drunk under the table by Starbuck.

Bill huffed out a breath and realised that his response, perhaps, might have been a tad in the extreme.

A look up to the others in the barracks, who were all staring at him in an abrupt-conversation-breaking silence, confirmed this suspicion. He looked back down at his son and couldn't quite shake the feeling that Lee had deserved it, no matter what.

Unspoken law in the universe and all that.

However, explaining this to everyone without admitting to all and sundry that the reason he had objected to Lee's announcement so vehemently was because he was both founder and sole member of The Presidential Legs Appreciation Society. In fact, there was no easy way out of this at all. He heaved a sigh.

"Ah, frak."


	3. Chapter 3

**I'm stuck on chapter 5, but I figured it's time I updated. **

**Contrary to popular belief, I am not a rabid Lee hater. Certain people have made their opinion known that it appears this way due to my writing style. This is not Lee's story and if y'all were looking for that kind of Rodama fic, then ye came to the wrong smut author. **

**Now, about that smut…**

**The thot plickens here, folks.**

**Chapter 3: Oh, THAT Conversation**

"My ode dad id tryig to gill me."

Lee Adama spoke around a bloody nose and the tissues that Kara had pressed to his face. They were soaked red but the bleeding appeared to be slowing somewhat.

"Stop whining." Bill grumbled. "You deserved it."

Bill wasn't entirely sure that Lee _had _really deserved it, but he wasn't going to tell Lee that. Nor was he going to divulge to everyone else what the punch had been about either. Lee, smart boy that he was, had also decided to keep his mouth shut about the incident and what had brought it on.

Which was why he had been allowed to remain conscious.

"Don't see what all the fuss is about." Colton admitted, nibbling cautiously on some algae inspired 'bread'. "I knock Edric out all the time."

"You wish." Edric sniped at her.

"If only to better tie you to the rack, love." She smiled at him in faux sweetness and Edric curled a lip at her in disdain. Colton's reply was to kiss air at him and then return to her bread nibbling with much careful inspection being undertaken with the rest of the green glop on her plate.

"It is a bit out of character." Laura noted absently, most of her attention was focused on the papers spread out in front of her around their lunch platters. Billy had brought them to her at her insistence. Just because she was in 'recovery' didn't mean that she no longer had a fleet to run. Bill would have been perusing the papers with her, except he was more focused on sulking at this point and she had no intention of letting him darken her good mood. She picked up a bulging folder and frowned at it. "Billy, what's this?"

"Oh, that's for Doctor Colton." Billy accepted the folder back from Laura. "It's her research and some of Giaus Baltar's stuff from his lab."

"Aaaaahhh….the infamous Baltar prick." Colton took the folder eagerly. "Let's see how inferior he is then." She flipped open the folder and began to speed read at an amazing rate. Soon she began to snigger and then ripping sheets out of the docket and tossing them over her shoulder to litter the floor behind her. "Wrong, wrong, wrong, just plain STUPID, laughable, imbecilic, wrong again…huh, hadn't thought of that…WRONG…" Colton trailed into silence and then frowned at the last paper in her hand. She tilted her head as she read and then growled low in her throat. She looked up at the rest of the table.

"Let's kill him." She announced.

"Baltar?" Edric looked at his friend.

"No, the Pope, of _course _Baltar."

Edric sighed. "Colton, remember we had this little talk. About what was, and what wasn't appropriate behaviour for law abiding citizens."

"Not sure where you're going with this, Eddie." Colton shook her head and a grating sound eked out from between Edric's molars. Colton grinned wickedly.

"You can't kill someone. It's against the law."

"Only if you get caught." Colton held up a finger as if to illustrate the point.

"Well, conspiring in front of the leaders of humanity _might_ tip their hand." Lee pointed out. Done with bleeding apparently.

"Conspiring points to conspiracy and we all know that Governments and the Military are particularly good at THAT." Colton stuck her tongue out at Lee and he frowned at her.

"There's no conspiracies in this government." He glanced at his father, pointedly avoiding Laura. Aversion therapy worked fast. "Right?"

"You mean aside from keeping our current condition a closely guarded secret from the remainder of the human race until we figure out a way to deal with it?" Bill shrugged a shoulder. "Nope, that pretty much fills this week's quota of conspiracies."

Laura coughed something that sounded very much like a laugh into her cup of tea. Having taken Edric's advice to avoid too much caffeine.

"Besides, lack of evidence only proves that the conspiracy is working." Colton flicked crumbs off the table and onto the floor. "Back to the matter at hand. Let's kill Gaius Baltar."

"Let's not, and say we did." Edric glared at her.

"_Why_ are you so against this?" Colton slapped her palm against the table in irritation. "Do you think I'm not smart enough to get away with murder?"

Edric got that look about him. The same look that males across the universe got when the woman in their life turned to them and said 'notice anything different about me?', 'does my ass look big in this?' and 'what did you think of my sister/mother/best friend?'. Edric pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the table as he stalled for time.

"It's not that…"

"What then?" Colton crossed her arms over her chest and leant them onto the table. "We're all waiting with baited breath to hear."

Actually, everyone else was wishing they were places elsewhere. Laura and Bill had seen what Colton and Edric could do to the room when they were play fighting. They shuddered to think what Colton might actually be capable of in a full blown temper.

"I don't want you to get in trouble?" When Colton didn't smash her metal plate in his face, Edric decided to run with it. "I mean, if someone _gave you away_ then you'd get put in the brig and you wouldn't like that. Hating small spaces and all that."

"Hmmph." Colton looked mollified. Slightly. A little put out that she couldn't rationalise fighting with Edric anymore but not likely to break anything for the foreseeable future. "I'm going to go fix something. You going to eat that?" Colton pointed at Edric's plate and he quickly (wisely) shook his head. She snatched up his plate as well as her own and left the table to retreat to her machine at the end of the barracks.

Edric breathed out a long sigh of a near miss and turned back to the others. They were all looking at him for an explanation and he grasped for one that would satisfy them.

"Cabin fever." He shrugged a shoulder. "She hated Battlestars to begin with and now she's trapped in a single room aboard one. Colton plus small space equals Bad Things Going Down."

"We should be getting out in the next couple of days. We really need to deal with the fleet before they stage a riot or a coup or something equally as…likely." Laura sighed.

"Yeah, time for me to be getting back to the CIC." Bill rumbled. "Past time."

"You thought about how you're going to do that, Madame President?" Billy asked, if she had a plan he needed to know so he could start making arrangements.

Bill and Laura shared a glance.

"Press conference." Laura said.

"Big one." Bill agreed.

"How delightfully simple." Colton said from the other end of the room. She still had her back to them and appeared to be pouring the leftovers of lunch _into_ her machine. "Any plans on what's going to happen to us? I mean, Gods forbid that we actually have a say in what goes on in OUR lives." She looked over her shoulder at the assembled throng and then narrowed her eyes and turned back to her machine, tinkering noisily and muttering dark mutters.

"Yeah, we want out of here. You know you can't keep us locked up, not if you don't want us killing each other at the very least." Edric pointed out, a little more politely. "Wouldn't you rather we were useful?"

"I can see to it that you're put onto a flight squad. Let's see what that flyer of yours is capable of when she's on top form."

Edric nodded.

"Cool beans. What about us geniuses?" Colton still wasn't facing them, turning dials and cranking levers on her machine. It looked ridiculous, but she seemed happy with it so nobody had quite worked up the courage to ask what it was actually _for. _

"Well, we could see about getting you a- -" Laura was cut off by Colton's hand slapping the side of the machine and then her foot lashing out to kick it sharply in apparently just the right spot. It coughed to life and chugged away merrily to itself. Colton planted her hands on her hips and tilted her head. After a moment or two she turned to them with a little 'look what I did, aren't you proud?' grin on her face. She skipped around the machine and stooped to pull something from it, before leaning over the top of it and pushing the large red button that helpfully said 'off'. with a tearing sound, she ripped what the machine had produced out of the back and then walked back over to them. Creating things seemed to put Colton into a better mood so everybody reached the simultaneous and silent decision to gush over it.

Even if they didn't know what the frak it was.

"What do you think?" Colton dropped down next to Edric and was too absorbed in what she had just made to take in the reactions of the others.

"Is that…?" Lee reached out hesitantly to touch and then drew his hand back like he couldn't stand to really find out it was all a mirage.

"It is. What the frak?" Kara did reach out and gently touch the stuff spooled over Colton's hands.

"Hmm, a little rougher than I wanted, and the colour's a bit deplorable but…alright for a first attempt." Colton held it up to the light and scrutinised it with a critical eye.

"How did you do that?" Laura reached out and Colton allowed her to take it from her hands. "That's amazing."

"Well, I do try." Colton smirked and buffed her nails in a falsely modest manner. "But you've really got Edric to thank for it." She jerked her thumb at the huge man innocently sitting beside her. His brows rose up in surprise.

"Was that a compliment?"

"Statement of fact, darling. If you haven't been stupid enough to give me that horrific 'milk' stuff, which -luckily for you- wasn't actually a dairy product, then I wouldn't have had to be smart enough to figure this out and prevent myself future mishaps with the green…gunk." Colton looked at the uniformly green food with distaste and prodded the nearest lump with her fork as if she expected it to prod back.

"But…this is cloth. How can you make material from food?" Laura was stroking the bolt of cloth reverently. Colton had said it wasn't refined enough for her tastes, but it felt like the finest Virgon silk. It was a very, very, pale green colour (which could be easily dyed) and the applications for this were…well, they were really, really, good Laura was sure.

"Well, silk worms make silk from plants, right, and on Virgon they were experimenting with spooling silk from goat's milk (say that ten times fast after you've drunk a litre of Dogtag), anyway, it seemed a simple enough thing to try and replicate and extrapolate the process with that gods awful stuff you lot are calling food these days." Colton lounged against the table and toyed with said Gods awful food as she explained it all as if it were as simple as opening a hatch and flicking on a light. She looked up at the rest of the table and ignored the way they were all staring at her. Obviously, she was used to it. "We really need to do something about the food situation, kids."

"You're telling me, I'd rather eat sawdust." Edric shoved the plate away from him. "Think you can cook up some E-numbers, Colton? Won't be very healthy, but at least it will taste good." He looked at Colton innocently.

"I could if I had full access to a lab and some lovely chemicals. Might even be able to make a very beef like meat substitute." She propped her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table and smiled sweetly at the rest of the table. Namely Adama and Roslin.

"Beef?" Lee said with an incredibly hopeful look on his face.

"Sure, it's all in the chemistry. I can make this charming…adaptable," she said it like most would say 'eviscerated', "medium and turn it into almost anything." She illustrated her point by sculpting some of it into a smiling face and then holding the plate up beside Edric's head. "See? Food AND portrait material. The possibilities are endless!"

Edric flipped the plate out of her grip and promptly sent it sailing towards her face. She ducked as lightening quick as she was capable, the plate splattered gunk first into the wall and…stayed there.

"We might also want to think about some cement…possibly bulkhead sealant if you ever run out of the regular stuff."

"Beef." Lee said again. He seemed to think a moment and then looked at Colton like a puppy desiring its favourite treat. "Cheese? The red kind?"

Colton smiled, brows high on her forehead. "Is there any other kind?"

Lee turned to his father. "Dad, _cheese." _Bill looked at him, he had heard the conversation too. When Lee saw his father was still in a non-receptive mood to him, he moved onto the next seat of power (at high risk to his obdurately perfect face). "Madame President, _red_ cheese!"

Colton leaned over to Edric and muttered into his ear. "What the frak is red cheese?"

"No clue, but you'd better figure it out if you want the lobbyist on your side."

Colton and Edric nodded at exactly the same time and tuned back into the conversation.

"Can you make beer?" Kara asked, first things first, screw the cheese.

"Hey, you already made bread…well, okay, green cardboard." Colton tapped it hard against the table with a thunking sound to illustrate. "Beer is liquid bread, I can do beer."

Lee and Kara turned and levelled hard glares at the Admiral and President respectively. Billy joined in with a pleading look, a red cheese hamburger…he'd do a LOT of things for a red cheese hamburger.

Bill and Laura rocked backwards slightly under the force of that WANT for some better scran. Sure moral was low, but Laura hadn't realised something as simple as a good meal, even if it was artificial, would boost things so much. Just the prospect had gotten more energy out of the three than they'd been able to summon at will in months. She looked at Bill.

Bill looked at her.

They both turned to Colton.

"You said you needed a lab?"

Colton smiled sweetly at Edric in a supreme 'I told you so' manner and then laced her fingers together, turning back to the President of the Twelve Colonies.

"Let's talk dimensions and supplies."

**$inister $cribe**

"Well, we've got to tell them now." Edric told Colton as they both smiled and waved at Lee, Kara and Billy as they finally left for the night.

"Now, now, let's not be hasty." Colton hedged, she still planned on getting out of this if she could wrangle it. "Smile and wave, honey. Smile and wave."

"He knocked his own son out." Edric spoke out the corner of his mouth to her, hoping the distraction of said son would keep Bill from overhearing. "For _looking_ at Laura. We've got to tell them. Maybe they can…steel themselves against it."

"Bad choice of words, sweetie." Colton snorted but then arched a brow at him as if something had just occurred to her. "And you are hardly one to cast stones. I believe there was couple of flight deck crewmen who very nearly had their heads shoved up each other's arses for making a comment about the fit of my pin-stripe bootlegs."

"That was an entirely different situation." Edric folded his arms over his chest.

"I completely agree, my favourite trousers were involved after all." She smirked and mimicked his pose, just for the hells of it. "What were you doing anyway? Protecting my virtue?"

"No. None of it left by that point." She scowled at him and he smirked back.

"A situation for which _you_ were responsible, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm never mistook."

Their dark eyes clashed, each of them wearing a small not entirely innocent smirk. For a moment, there was something very like a frisson of heat arcing between them, but then the hatch slammed shut, the locking mechanism spooled out and they turned back to Laura and Bill.

"The Admiral and the President…Gods, sounds like some cheesy romance novel." Colton sighed. "A gay one."

Edric elbowed her sharply.

"What?!" Colton demanded of him. "You and I both know that a woman President could have only happened at the end of the frakking world!"

"You are such a…RRR!" Edric made a choking motion with his hands in the vicinity of her neck and Colton made a similar sound of disgust before wheeling away from him to storm off in a huff.

Edric realised he had been played in the nick of time and lunged to catch her arm.

"Ah, no you don't. You're not getting out of it that easy."

"Damn, nearly had you." Colton dug her heels in but Edric solved the problem by picking her up and flinging her in his arms until her legs were over one arm and her shoulders over another. She glared at him fiercely and folded her arms across her chest. "Caveman." She growled at him.

"In-closet submissive." He cheerfully returned and dropped her on the cot opposite the couch that Bill and Laura had taken up residence on.

"Repressed." She shot back.

""Whore." He narrowed his eyes at her and she surged up onto her knees and planted her hands on his stomach, fisting them in his shirt, either prepared to launch him across the room or pull him down on top of her.

"Bore."

"Kids!" Bill snapped and both Edric and Colton turned to look at him, having completely forgotten he was there.

"What?" They demanded together and Bill just ground his teeth. Laura looked faintly amused and tucked her legs up under her.

"You feel like telling us what you two are fighting about, or do we have to figure it out for ourselves?" Laura smirked at Bill. "We could make a game of it. You mime what it is and we'll try and guess."

Colton and Edric looked at each other and Colton's hands released his shirt. She sank down onto the cot and Edric took a seat next to her.

"Trust me, if you think we're bad now, you don't want us acting _that_ out." Edric rubbed a hand through his short hair. Colton followed the motion and then looked at Laura out of the corner of her eye. Laura arched a brow and Colton coughed before moving on.

"Yes, well, um…Edric, why don't you start?"

"Because you're better at this sort of thing?"

"If there is a creature in this galaxy with less tact and subtlety, we haven't found it yet." Colton told him wryly and he smirked at that. Point.

"Okay, uh," Edric smeared a hand over his mouth and looked anywhere but at Laura and Bill. "See, the thing is, you're still in recovery, right? I mean, having your entire immunes system replaced isn't exactly a walk in the park."

"Yeah, we know. We were there." Bill answered flatly. He was not in the mood for their antics right now.

"Yeah, but when you get better, I mean, properly better, which should be happening in the next couple of days, um…" He looked at Colton and she rolled her eyes with a heavy sigh.

"FINE then." She sat forward and arranged herself, clearing her throat as if about to give a great lecture to her peers. "Never send a man to do a job you know you're going to have to do yourself anyway." She shot a sly glance at Edric.

"It all boils down to this, folks." Colton clapped her hands onto her knees in emphasis. "Your bodies are filled with tiny machines right now and, once they're finished adjusting to your system they're going to want to do a full system check, right?"

Bill and Laura glanced at each other, reassured to see that they were just as mystified as each other.

"Your bodies are going to have EVERYTHING operating at full power. Organs, chemicals, hormones, you name it, it'll all be flipped firmly to the 'on' position. Do ye see where I'm going with this?"

Bill just glared at her. Laura, however, appeared to have a dim light of understanding dawning in her eyes.

"I'm going to have to spell it out for you, aren't I?" Colton didn't wait for an answer. She never did. "You will, for about a week, be reduced to periodic bouts of…primal urges shall we say."

"What?" Bill was looking less and less impressed by the second.

"Honey, there will be times in the coming week when all you can think about are the three F's in life." Colton looked at him and spoke as bluntly as she knew how. "Feeding, Fighting and Fra- -"

"Fornication." Edric supplied in the nick of time.

Laura's brows had shot up and Bill's scowl had deepened to rather frightening proportions.

"What _exactly_ are you saying?"

Colton looked at the ceiling and muttered something that sounded like 'how do they all find me?' and then levelled a glare back at Bill.

"You will suck back food like you read about, you will want to knock someone's lights out at the least provocation -_Bill_- and you will need to frak like you need to breathe…if not more so."

THAT got Bill's attention. Laura appeared to be caught in some kind of horrified trance in which all her worst fears, or possibly most secret desires, had been realised. Bill narrowed his eyes at her and agreed that he would very much like to knock out _anyone_ who thought they were getting into his Commander In Hotness' pants.

"Most likely with each other." Colton added and Laura squeaked a tiny bit in alarm.

"Not that you didn't want to already-OW!" Colton rubbed her arm where Edric had punched her hard enough to bruise. "What?"

Edric sighed and smeared a hand over his face. Glancing at the way Bill and Laura were now sitting very tense and very still on their couch, pointedly NOT looking at one another. He glared back at Colton and she gave him another 'what?!' look.

"You know if you remove one letter from your name you're an asshole?" He growled at her.

"Hey, you're like that all the time." Colton shrugged at him and rose up off the cot. "I'm going to grab something to eat. Anybody want anything?"

Gods, apparently there was a tact chromosome and it was definitely missing from Colton's genetic make-up.


	4. Chapter 4

**AT long last!! **

**I return. **

**Here we are with the next instalment. I've not been writing very much at the moment which is odd considering I've finally got my new computer, but I just never seem to be at home very much anymore.**

**Don't actually know how I'm managing that to be honest. **

**Anyways, bit of Bill and Laura raunch for ya in this here chappie and it only gets hotter from here on in. **

**If ya can't stand the heat stay out of the genealogical department!!**

**Reviews are love. **

**Chapter 4: Flattery Will Get You Everywhere**

"So, you enjoying yourself?"

Laura froze, almost guiltily, in the action of sliding the silky shirt from her shoulders. She glanced at the thin sheet of curtain separating them and let herself shiver at the sound of Bill's voice slipping through the material to scrape over her nerve endings like a physical thing.

"Enjoying myself?"

_Paff, paff, paff, bap, paff!_

Laura listened to him beat an innocent punch bag and work up a sweat. He smelled good. Even with the curtain between them she could scent the clean male aroma of him. It slid into her body and turned her internal heating to high. She swallowed hard. Only a thin curtain between them. Laura deliberately rasped the zipper of her new pants down and slid them off along the curves of her legs. She was acutely aware of standing there in nothing but her underwear while Bill was mere feet away. She folded the pants and brushed her hand against the curtain, smirking a little when she heard a hitch in his breathing and a scuff of his fist not entirely connecting with the punch bag.

"Yeah, trying on your new wardrobe. It's been a while since you had new clothes isn't it?" His voice sounded a little strangled.

"Are you saying I'm out of fashion?"

"Not at all. You are the haut couture of a post apocalyptic society."

"Damn straight." Laura muttered and picked up her last suit. It was the one that Colton had designed for her and Laura was beginning to suspect that the woman was intentionally trying to provoke a reaction of one of the Three F's from Bill. If not, she just had raunchy taste in suits. Laura held the jacket up and smiled. The fabric was silky soft, the colour a deep red and the skirt was…well, it was going to be a tight fit and Laura very much doubted that she could bend over in it.

In the interest of public decency laws, it was a good thing that the President didn't _have_ to do a lot of bending over…Laura immediately shied away from where that thought could lead her. For instance, what she could bend over and who it might be for…._not thinking about it!_

Colton had been right about the urges that were swimming through her bloodstream. She hadn't felt like this since she had been a teenager and had ogled the high school men's swim team at every opportunity she got. Even then, it had never been this _intense_.

Laura heaved a sigh and moved to dress in the suit, not entirely sure that it would fit her, her sense of self was slightly skewed given how she had just lost a great deal of weight aesthetically. That was to say that she _looked _like the slim tight bodied twenty something she had been thirty odd years ago but she actually weighed nearly twice that of a regular person of the same size. Nanotech was heavy stuff in all forms of the word.

She wiped the smile from her face and resolved to just get dressed and get it over with. She was teasing herself as much as him after all.

On the other side of the curtain, Bill was very much aware that he was being toyed with. Either that, or the universe was conspiring to drive him insane. He beat the bag a little harder and listened to the rush of material sliding over her skin. She was getting dressed. Bill's eyes glazed briefly as he thought about how much he would give in order to witness such an act. Because where there was dressing, there would eventually be undressing too.

Bill missed the punch bag.

Again.

"Have you thought about what we're going to do tomorrow?" It had been decided that they couldn't put off telling the fleet any longer. Now that they were completely recovered and no longer a danger to themselves and others at any rate.

"Ummm…yes." He listened to the shimmy of material sliding over her skin and the growl of a zipper. She must be doing up her skirt. Was she still without a shirt? What colour was the skirt? Was it pale, showing off the dark of her hair, or was it a deep colour to emphasise the porcelain of her skin? Bill dragged himself back into the conversation when she next spoke and tried to convince himself that fantasising about her was not a good idea.

"Colton will have to explain the scientific bit. Lee's briefing her on it now, well, how to be a little more press core friendly at any rate. The plan is that she and Edric will be introduced by Lee and then she'll explain what went on as an authority on the subject and then she can introduce us and we'll deal with the fallout."

Bill returned to his enthusiastic beating of the punch bag.

"Is it wise to entrust the success of this plan to a woman that can barely string two civil words together for someone she _likes_ never mind the press core who, and I quote, are 'nothing more than a flock of heathen vultures who should be dragged out onto the hanger deck and shot as a civic service'."

Laura was silent a moment.

"Are you sure it wasn't _you_ that said that, Bill?"

He scowled at the curtain.

"Now, now, don't look at me like that. It gives the impression that you don't like me and it's very important that the Admiral of the Fleet and the President have good relations." She had a slightly mocking tone, even though she couldn't see him but still knew his expression. Bill wondered if she knew exactly what kind of better-than-good relations he was interested in having with aforementioned President.

"Couldn't have that now, could we?" He had stopped beating the bag and was now completely focused on staring straight at the curtain. Wishing that one of his new abilities had been x-ray vision.

She was silent another long moment.

"You know, Bill, I'm not sure this suit is entirely Presidential material. Would you come in here and give me your professional opinion?"

Bill narrowed his eyes and proceeded with caution. She was up to something, she always was, and if she wasn't then she was planning on being up to something in the near future. He approached the curtain cautiously and pulled it open, stepping inside. Grey light washed over him through the curtain. He looked at Laura and went completely still.

"What do you think?" Laura planted her hands on her very slim waist and canted her hip at an angle.

Think? Yeah right. Not when all blood flow had abruptly decided that it needed to be south of the equator. His gaze rolled right down her and then climbed straight back up again. Savouring every inch. When he got back to her face, he could just make out the faint flush scoring high over her cheeks. He could hear the quickening of her heartbeat and smirked to know that she wasn't entirely in control where he was concerned. Which was immeasurably comforting since he had given up control to her a long time ago.

"Presidential…isn't the first word that comes to mind." He said slowly and moved towards her. He hadn't meant to go closer. He was liable to do something stupid, though enjoyable he was sure, if he got any closer. His feet were taking him towards her anyway. He prowled around her, viewing her from all angles and enjoying every second of it. His blood seemed to thicken, becoming honey in his veins, a beat that pulsed throughout his entire body. He was _hungry_ for her. Looking down at the back of her neck, he decided it was time that he introduced her to that fact.

"What does come to mind then?" Laura tried very hard not to shiver. She could feel his eyes burning into her back, sliding down her spine and over her curves. She could sense that he was aroused, feel the heat coming off him at her back.

"Hmmm…" His voice rumbled in her ear, he must have been so _close_ to her. "Flattering."

"Flattering?" She frowned a little bit at that, that was not what she had been expecting. She didn't know what she had been expecting…it wasn't entirely disappointed though. Perhaps he would elaborate.

"Yes. Flattering." Obviously comfortable in his word choice then. "It takes what's already there and…draws attention to it." He was in front of her and Laura looked up into his dark eyes, they were half lidded and he wasn't looking at her face, he was looking at her body, and damn if that didn't please her. "Like here," he reached up and trailed his finger down over the stitching of the lapels of the jacket. "The stitches is a different colour, you're not wearing a shirt to clutter the neckline so it naturally leads the eye down…and then back up again." His finger brushed over the button at her bust and trailed up the other lapel to her collar bone. This time Laura couldn't hold back her tiny shiver.

"What else?"

"The colour." His hand swept down over her arm, firm and hot. "Brings out the red in your hair, which in turn, brings out the green in your eyes." He looked up to meet her eyes and their gazes clashed like a physical thing. Hard, jarring and sensuous.

Laura's tongue swept out over her lower lip nervously and he watched _every_ movement.

"Hmm." Was all she could manage to say.

"Then, of course, there's the skirt." He dropped to his knees in front of her and Laura whipped her head down to watch what he might do next. Her breath caught a little and she didn't even care that she was giving too much away.

"What about it?"

"It's much more _fitted_ than your other skirts. Emphasises the fullness of your hips." His hands skimmed over said hips with an electrifying touch and Laura decided to forgive his male faux pas. "The length of your legs." His hands slid down the outside of her thighs to her knees and Laura's head tilted back, her fingers digging into her waist and her eyes fluttering closed. After heaving in a fortifying breath, she looked back down at him again. Trying to hear him over the galloping beat of her heart. "And here, the splits in the hem, mean you can move your legs more easily." He flattened his palms over the skin just above her knees and slid upwards, his thumbs sliding under the two parallel cuts in the material that allowed her to lengthen her stride. The slits ran over the top of her legs from the hem to mid thigh. "It also means, if someone's watching you move, then they can see a little bit more of you."

Laura was suddenly very intensely aware of how they were positioned, if someone had happened to throw back the curtain, not only would she be incredibly upset, but 'compromising' wouldn't even begin to cover it. Her standing, hands on her hips, the Admiral of the Fleet on his knees in front of her (which was a very heady thought now that it had a occurred to her), his hands spanning her thighs, his thumbs and the heels of his hands under the hem of her skirt and red hot on her skin. His grip tightened a little when he rose back to his full height, making sure to drag her skirt up a little bit as he did so, until he loomed over her.

"Anything else?" Gods she hoped so.

"Fishing for compliments, Madame President?"

"Only if you're on the on the other end of the rod," her gaze swept down the front of his body and then back up again, "Admiral."

He growled. Low and rumbling and vibrating through his chest to hers. A smirk kicked at his lips and he began to circle her again. Stopping right behind her until his breath rushed against her neck.

"The jacket." He finally decided. His hands went to her waist. "Nips in, right here, the perfect draw to your curves. Enough to drive a man to distraction." His hands slid down her sides, his fingers pushing under hers until he spanned her waist and she gripped his hands, fingers laced with his.

She tried to speak, Gods, she could barely breathe, but she had to ask.

"Speaking from experience?"

His grip tightened, he yanked her back so she made a small sound of surprise and her back was suddenly flush against his front. She swallowed hard and began to pant a tiny bit. Chest heaving against the flush fit of the jacket he was so busy laying praise on.

"No, Laura, nothing could drag my attention from you and you know it." He was talking into her ear, his voice sliding through her and turning her insides molten. His chin was brushing her shoulder, his lips just touching her ear with every word. "You shouldn't toy with me, you know. You don't know what you're playing with."

Now, that irritated her a little bit.

"I know your precious responsibilities will stop you before things get too interesting."

"Do I detect a hint of bitterness?" He was nuzzling her hair out of the way so he could brush his nose against her neck. She shivered and told herself that he was NOT charming and she shouldn't forgive him so quickly for giving her the brush off.

"What do you expect?" A small voice was yelling at her to shut up, strip off and pin him to the nearest flat surface and show him how commanding his Commander in Chief could be. She wanted to punish him a little bit first, though. "A couple of weeks ago you wouldn't have even been interested in me in a hypothetical situation and now that I have a cleavage that starts where my throat ends and the tightest ass in the entire fleet you're interested, seems a little shallow to me."

He growled at her again, teeth scoring against her skin for the briefest instant before he began to murmur sinful things into her ear once more.

"I have to agree, that your cleavage is fantastic, especially from this angle, and that your ass should have an award inscribed to it to acknowledge its status without peer, but there is nothing shallow about what I feel for you, have felt about you for a long time." His grip tightened on her hips and spun her around to face him so fast that she nearly stumbled in her new red 'frak me' heels. Her hands slapped up onto his chest to keep her balance when he dragged her even closer until they were flush against one another. If they wanted to get any closer, removal of clothing was necessary, and she wasn't entirely sure it wouldn't come to that.

She was beginning to think that it was dangerous indeed to toy with him.

"Now, are you going to let me kiss you or not?"

Her breath caught, her nails dug into his chest a little bit and his head bent to hers.

"Dad, I…oh." There was a shriek of metal on metal as the loops holding up the curtains were swept aside with the billowing of the material.

Laura shut her eyes to try and mask her irritation, though Bill did nothing to swallow his growl.

"I'm going to have to kill your son." She admitted with little regret.

"There's a queue." Bill grunted back and pried his hands away from her waist. There was nothing he'd like more than to punch his son out -_again_- but that might not be politic. He looked over to Lee. "What?"

"Your new, um, uniform is here." Lee gestured over his shoulder and seemed to realise that the tiny voice in the back of his head screaming at him was his survival instinct belatedly emerging. "Madame President." Lee greeted Laura, who was looking at him, no, glaring at him over her shoulder. He made his retreat at the first opportunity.

"Laura, I…"

"Yes, Bill, I know." She spun back to him, suddenly not wanting to hear it. She'd rather not have it quoted to her again. "Responsibilities, right?" She turned away from him and sashayed out from the grey cocoon of the curtain, the Ass Without Peer wiggling a little more in irritation at him as if to taunt him.

He scowled after her and almost took the crewman's hand off when he held out his new uniform to him. He shot a belatedly apologetic look at them but they were already scurrying for cover. Everybody knew that when the Admiral had That Look it was best to give him at least ten feet of play room. The circumstances of That Look usually being brought on in the company, or shortly afterwards, of the President was something that the crew knew better than to comment on if they didn't want to spend the rest of their life up close and personal with the sewage recycling facilities.

He shut the curtain with an irritated movement and tried to soothe himself with the familiarity of dressing in his uniform after an extended leave of absence.

Laura strode across the barracks and took propped a hip against the drawing desk that Colton was working at.

"Nice suit. Told you it would fit."

"Apparently it's very flattering."

"Hmm?" Colton finally dragged her attention away from her meticulous blue prints (the room that was to be her lab had finally been chosen and she was designing the whole thing herself) and looked up at Laura, taking off her glasses and laying them on the desk. "Am I detecting some tension?"

Laura shot her an irritated glance.

"Well, it _does_ look very nice. I thought you wanted to make a grand entrance for the press thingy tomorrow?"

"Yes." Laura gritted.

"Then what's the problem?"

"I think we should add Lee to the 'Must Kill' list. Possibly before Baltar." Laura mused, glaring at the back of Lee's head. Really, though, what was the point of being President if you didn't get a little leeway when it came to air locking certain someones that happened to deserve it?

"Ah, were you and the admiral in congress when the small-and-annoying interrupted?"

"No!" Laura looked momentarily scandalised and then a little sulky. "Unfortunately."

She slapped Colton on the back of the head when the other woman began to chuckle. Which, of course, made her only laugh harder. At Laura's homicidal glance she managed to wrestle herself under control.

"I sympathise of course." She petted Laura's arm a little awkwardly. "On both matters of acute sexual frustration and the homicidal urges that Adama the Third seems to bring out in just about anyone." At Laura's look she continued. "Hey, looking at a woman who hasn't been laid in over sixty years _and_ who has done her fair share of press conferences to explain complex science to the idiotic masses."

"I see that Lee hasn't quite succeeded in introducing you to the concept of tact and diplomacy." Laura said dryly.

"Oh, you know me, I'll be fantastic on stage." Colton was back to her blueprints, only half interested in the conversation now.

"Uh…huh." Laura did not sound reassured, she rarely was around Colton. "Are you nearly done?"

"Hmm…"

"What's this space here for?" Laura gestured to a box shaped inlet in the wall lines of the cleared room.

"Don't know. Not wide enough for one of the bigger desks, too narrow for one of those run around deals with the chair in the middle and…I have pretty much everything that I need. I think it's the appendix."

"What?"

"You know, it's there, but nobody knows why or what to do with it."

"Right." Laura said in her I-have-no-idea-what-you're-talking-about-but-I'll-say-I-do-for-a-peaceful-life tone.

"You know, you could always just….take matters in hand." It sounded so lascivious when Colton said it, even while trying to find something else to fit into the room's appendix space.

"You first. I saw Edric eyeing one of the nurse's in the medbay last time we went for a check-up."

The blue pencil snapped on the grid paper and Laura smirked.

"I should have known that, as a politician, you'd be a compulsive liar." Colton grumbled and laboriously began to sharpen a new point on her pencil with sandpaper since no one would let her have a knife. "And Edric Adama has me precisely where I want him. I'm a genius so it just isn't obvious right away. What's your excuse?"

"I don't need one. I'm the President." Laura sniffed and folded her arms over her chest. She glanced back over towards the curtain and her mouth dropped open.

"How's the fit, ladies?"

Colton turned to see what Laura was busy gaping at.

The Admiral of the Fleet had his new uniform and, obviously, Laura had just realised that all the fuss about men in uniforms wasn't just hype.

"Nice togs." Colton allowed. He was quite dashing, but she'd rather not have a black eye from a possessive President.

Laura was too busy stalking around her Admiral and eyeing him from every angle. She had always thought that Bill looked good in his uniform but…mee-_OW!_ Made broad shoulders broader, trim hips trimmer and _there_ was an ass worth ogling.

"Very flattering, Admiral." Laura allowed on a smirk. "My compliments to the tailor."

"Many thanks, Madam President." Edric joined the group and grinned down at her, then looked over at Colton.

Colton spun in her chair to ask Edric a question, her hand carrying her laboriously sharpened pencil up to slide it through the knot of her hair. Her eyes landed on Edric and his new uniform, the pencil flew out of her hand and she lunged to catch it, fumbling it once, catching it again and finally managing to grasp it. She cleared her throat and looked at him expectantly.

"Yes?" She was studiously ignoring the flush climbing her throat.

"Told you stitching wasn't useless." He smirked at her.

"It's still a girly hobby." Colton sniffed and turned back to her drawings.

"Well, your clothes are at the end of your bed." Edric said to the back of her head. She waved at him dismissively, not turning away from the blueprints. "I'm just gonna swing by the infirmary for a bit, I think Cottle wanted to ask me something." Edric backed away, watching Colton the whole time.

Her shoulders tensed but she still didn't turn.

Edric rolled his eyes, turned and strode away.

Bill and Laura watched the entire display with amusement and Laura ambled back over to lounge against Colton's desk again while Bill went off to have another talk to Lee about what was and what wasn't the proper procedure about interrupting a meeting between the President and the Admiral.

"Hmm, yes, _exactly_ where you want him." Laura looked down at Colton. "It's truly inspiring to see a genius at work."

"It's all part of the game, Laura my child." Colton sat back and smirked, this time managing to get the pencil threaded through her hair. "Ta-dah!" She handed the finished blueprints to Laura for final inspection.

Laura scanned them and pretended to know what she was looking at. She frowned at the small box that Colton hadn't known what to do with two minutes previously.

"What's this here?"

Colton leant over to see what Laura was pointing at.

"It's a double rack." Colton said as innocently as she could manage. Which wasn't very well.

Laura arched a brow at her.

"Well, it seems only fair that I sleep in the lab. I'll be working late there most days anyway and I don't want to oust someone else from their rack."

Laura's lips twitched.

"And I prefer a double rack, I couldn't have one on the _Cerberus_ so I'm taking the chance now." Colton twirled a finger in a loose strand of hair straying from the knot at her nape.

Laura was now working very hard not to grin.

"And I- -look, I don't need a reason, okay, I'm a genius, let's just leave it at that." Colton lent on the desk and rested her chin on her folded arms. She scowled. "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything." Laura shook her head with all the innocence she could muster. Managing to hold onto her control with her fingernails. Her jaw ached from not laughing.

"You were _thinking_ it."


	5. Chapter 5

_**Final chapter, I'll try and get the first one of part three up real soon. In fact, I'm gonna start writing it right now. **_

_**Reviews are love. **_

_**Chapter 5: Tact and Subtlety**_

"_Where is_ she?"

Edric stood outside the doors of the hanger deck and shifted from foot to foot in a way that might have been construed as nervously had he not been an Adama. Adamas didn't get nervous, remember?

"She said she'd be here." Laura tried to soothe him. They had been waiting for the better part of ten minutes for Colton to show her face. Lee was up doing his politician thing (even though he still looked like he was playing dress up in Laura's opinion) and they still had a few minutes before he had to really begin stalling. She was nervous about the whole affair herself, it likely being the public execution of her political career because, President or not, all people were going to hear today was 'Cylon hybrid'. Either way, focusing on Edric's nerves distracted her from her own and she was fine with that.

"Yeah, well, she didn't tell you how much she hates public speaking. I wouldn't put it past her to 'forget' that she was supposed to be here." Edric looked down the corridor with a scowl on his face. They were alone out here. The guard were at opposite ends of the corridor and it was just her and Edric. Bill was talking something over with Tigh, who had better things to do than show up at a Press Conference.

"She wouldn't do that." Laura said. She wasn't sure if she was stating a fact or asking a question but she hoped for the former. She straightened the fit of her jacket (she was wearing That Suit) and tried to breathe deep and think calming thoughts. "She's not as callus as you think. She'll do what she said she would." Laura might have been an idiot for putting such trust in a woman she'd only known for slightly longer than a week, but she read people well, had to in her line of work, and Colton wouldn't let her down.

"You haven't known her as long as I have." Edric gritted from between clenched teeth, still looking down the corridor.

"Doesn't mean that you know her better." Laura returned smoothly, snagging Edric's attention enough so that he turned to look at her and very nearly shrieked when Colton appeared behind him and did something that Laura couldn't see but could make a good guess at.

Edric stepped away from the grinning scientist, brushing the back of his trousers and looking a trifle violated.

"Talking about somebody I know?" Colton smirked knowingly at them and turned to catch Edric's ogling. "Do I have a stain somewhere, sweetheart?" Colton ran a hand down the side of her body and then back up to prop it in the curve of her waist.

She was dressed to kill.

Her hair was spooled up into a sleek and uncharacteristically neat knot on top of her head, her glasses were a new red lens pair that she had no doubt bartered for that morning and her clothes were obviously what Edric had tailored for her the night before. Though Laura doubted, judging by the look on his face, that he hadn't known that she would wear them in such a fashion. Colton wore her obligatory white lab coat, but not one that would be seen in any real lab anywhere. It covered her from neck to ankle and only Colton could have found a way to make something like that indecent. Colton had obviously been in such a hurry to make her appointment that she had only managed to fasten three of the black side buttons on the coat so it hung open at the neck over her chest in a bright coloured flag of the deep red lining. She was toeing the line of public decency by leaving the lower buttons free of their moorings so that the skirt of the coat was split clean to the hip. Black leather gloves covered her hands from fingertip to elbow and the only garments she wore under the coat were her black heels and stockings held up with a red garter.

Laura needed to find out where the woman got all this fabulous underwear.

"Um, uh…no?" Edric blinked. A lot.

"Well, try not to look too gormless, I think the Third is about to introduce us." Colton nodded to where Lee was standing speaking animatedly on the podium in front of the assembled press core.

"Am I late?" Bill rounded the corner, glanced over Colton, took a lot longer to look at Laura and then frowned at Edric's pole-axed expression. "What's with him?"

"Colton force trauma to the libido." Laura muttered and he smirked.

Colton grinned like she'd just been given an award for scientific achievement.

Lee was winding up his introduction of the two newest members of the fleet.

"Now remember, darling," Colton turned to Edric, pulled at his jaw until he was completely focused on her and began to fuss with his uniform. "You can kill everyone in there without leaving a mark on their bodies, I'm going to do the talking and, if all else fails, picture me naked."

Edric choked on the last and Lee swept an arm towards the doors where they were loitering.

"Come on then!" Colton said cheerfully, looped her arm through Edric's and towed him into the applause of the slightly confused Press Core.

To his credit, he recovered gamely and managed to put some military starch in his spine for ascending the steps to the stage. Colton released him to shake hands with Lee and Tom Zarek. She took the podium like a veteran and opened with a joke that managed to be wry instead of insulting.

Laura breathed a small sigh of relief.

"I told you she'd be fine." She smiled up at Bill and it faltered slightly when she saw the look of intense scrutiny on his face. He was standing very, very, close to her. "What?" Her voice came out a lot smaller than she had intended.

"You're pale." She didn't know if he was concerned or accusing.

"Well…"

"Have you eaten today?"

"What's that got to do with…?"

"You're nervous then."

"Well, my political career is about to not so much crash and burn as explode in the hanger, so I think I'm entitled to a bout of nerves."

"Hmm…" He draped his hands behind his back and turned eyes front. Laura didn't know if she should feel bereft or not.

They watched one of the aides come to stand by the hanger doors and wait to draw back the curtain there in time for their introduction. Laura shifted her hand to her waist and her weight from one hip to the other. She tossed her hair and let out a long calming breath.

"Gods, I want to frak you."

Laura choked on her calming breath.

"Excuse me?!" She looked up into black eyes that burned into her and over her. Sliding all the way down her body and then clambering all the way back up again.

"You heard." His voice was a deep rumble and Laura gulped audibly. He smiled faintly.

"Yes, I…what about the press conference?" She grasped for whatever straws she had and found none.

"Frak it. I want you. Right here, right now." He stepped in closer to her, just behind her, throwing heat against her body and rumbling directly into her ear. "Up against that bulkhead right there, my hands in your hair and your fantastic legs tight around me."

Laura shivered.

"Maybe not against the bulkhead. How about in the middle of that hangar out there for everyone to see? Let them all know right off that you're mine."

"Yours? I belong to no one but myself."

"Wrong." He wasn't touching her. Gods, he was doing everything but touch her and it was driving her crazy.

"You'd never abandon your responsibilities." Her voice shook with the effort of forcing it out of her constricting throat.

"Wrong again."

"Huh, prove it." She felt him stiffen behind her (oh, bad choice of words, Laura).

"I will, and when I do, I'll tear that skirt when I pushed it up out of the way. It's far too tight for public decency, it has to go." His fingers brushed over her hips and her lips parted on a silent gasp. "I'll remove your underwear with my teeth." He leaned right in, his teeth scraping against the sensitive shell of her ear in the barest caress.

"Not wearing any." The whispered words tumbled from her on a rush. Oh Gods. She did NOT just say that.

He bit back a growl but a moan leaked through his gritted teeth.

"The skirt _is_ very tight." Yes, she DID just say that and now she was compounding matters. Gods, she wanted him. He smelled fantastic. She could hear the booming thump of his rapid heartbeat. Feel the heat arcing between them. "Wouldn't, uh…wouldn't want to ruin the lines if it." Come on, Laura, remember to breathe. Passing out isn't very sexy.

"No." His breath gusted hot against her ear. "Couldn't have that." He inhaled deeply. "Want you."

Two words and a world of feeling injected into them. Just that hint of a growling groan just underlining them, it was enough to make her insides melt.

She was incredibly aware of the fact that there was someone just beyond that curtain and two cadres of guards at either end of the hallway who would _definitely_ hear them if Laura gave in to what Bill wanted to do to her. What she wanted him to do to her. This wasn't the time and it certainly wasn't the place for it, but…_but…_

All she had to do was take a step back.

Not even an entire step, half a step, if that. Her back would hit his chest. Connection would spark, electricity would fly. The sensation was almost prescient. Her breath hitched. _Do it,_ the little voice commanded. She tried to think of a reason she shouldn't. A thousand leapt to mind but not one of them held as much weight as the one reason that she should. Because she _wanted to._ She could say it was the Nanotech. Raging hormones. Shock from what she had been through. Survivor's insanity from a near death experience and then miraculously being cured of cancer but the simple fact of the matter was that she wanted to jump the Admiral of the Fleet and Gods damn it if he didn't want to jump her too.

Laura stepped back.

All the breath left his lungs on a whoosh and his chest heaved. They leant in towards each other.

"Laura, you're not helping with my control here."

"Frak your control." She murmured her hand reaching back to touch the scalding heat of his thigh, the muscles there bunched under her fingers until they felt rock hard and she couldn't resist a little feminine shudder at all that hot male strength trembling under her fingers. She turned her head so that she could see him out of the corner of her eye. His hand splayed low on her stomach and he pressed subtly, dragging her closer to him so they were flush together. His breath washed warm over her cheek and her lashes fluttered.

His grip on her tightened, hand sliding around her hip to tug her around to face him. She shifted her weight to spin on one heel. Nothing but the thought of getting into his arms in her head and then…

And then the curtains flew back and they were introduced to the entire mass of the Colonial Fleet's Press Core and a great deal of its military might.

They were frozen for a long moment, the thunder of applause crashing into their sensitive ears like a solid wall of sound.

Laura reacted first, the last four years of cutthroat politics teaching her how to react intelligently without thinking too much about it. She stepped back and to the side, sliding around Bill, looped her arm through his and dragged his slightly stupefied form out into the storm of flashbulbs and shouts from the Press.

As soon as they stepped out into the hangar proper, as soon as they came into view the applause died. It wasn't a sudden cessation of sound, rather a limping stunned petering off of numb hands falling to stillness.

Everything stopped.

The Press subsided into silence, their calls for pictures and hollers of questions grumbling to nothing in their throats. Cameras slid from shoulders and hung limp at their sides. Microphones drooped towards the floor, no longer intent on catching the next words that the leaders of humanity had to say.

The only sounds to be heard were a pair of military dress shoes and a set of red frak-me heels clipping softly across the hangar deck and a thousand necks creaking as they turned to follow Bill and Laura's every move.

Laura gave absolutely no indication of her discomfort, used to thinking and feeling one thing and looking like something entirely different. Bill retreated behind his emotionless military mask and the ascended the stairs to the stage, standing shoulder to shoulder with Colton and Edric. Colton stepped back from her place at the podium and allowed Laura to step forward. She smoothed her hands down over the front of That Suit and cleared her throat into the multitude of microphones set up to catch her every syllable. The sound boomed out across the hangar deck, echoed off bare walls and around the drafty support beams vaulted overhead. Laura tossed her head and shook out her hair, speaking clearly and bracing herself for the storm.

"Any questions?"

The Press core exploded.

**$inister $cribe**

"Gods, what a day."

Laura flopped down onto the sofa in Bill's private quarters and looked up at the assembled throng in the room. It was finally just her, Bill, Colton and Edric. Laura gave a slight frown when she realised that she had so quickly widened her inner circle to include the two 'Hybrid Survivors' -as the Press had dubbed them- and trusted them quite sufficiently. Nowhere near as much as she trusted Billy or Bill, she was too old (hah!) and paranoid for that, but she found herself turning to Colton and Edric to ask advice for things that she wouldn't have done a few days previously. She supposed that being locked in a room with the three of them was bound to bring them all closer to together…either that or drive them all insane. Well, Colton had been like that to begin with, so she didn't count.

"I think it went rather well." Colton smiled congenially and Edric shot her a glance.

"You what?"

"No loss of life, was there?" Colton peeled her long leather gloves off her arms and flexed her fingers, she had been in her 'Sexy Scientist' suit all day and, while the effect it had on Edric was rather pleasing, it wasn't half uncomfortable after a while.

"Heh, define 'life'." Laura muttered darkly.

"And only due to swift intervention of the guard." Bill grumbled into his tumbler of Ambrosia, throwing it back, pouring himself another while pouring the other three their first. He passed them around Edric took his and Colton's as he spoke.

"It could have been worse. She could have actually answered that Sagiterran's question about whether or not she was a punishment from the Gods." He frowned a little when Colton shook her head at the offered drink and pushed it away before picking up a pair of sweats and military tanks and disappearing through to the sleeping quarters.

"Didn't see the point, it's not the first time someone's accused me of same." Her voice was muffled by the rustling of clothes being yanked over her head.

"Since when did you not drink?" Edric had moved to stand in the doorway so he could see her. He went very still when he realised exactly how much of her he was seeing.

Laura smirked and sipped on her own drink as Bill handed it to her. He sat on the opposite end of the couch and drew her feet onto his lap, removing her heels and rubbing soothing circles over the sensitive skin there. Nanotech enhanced or not, her heels were determined to kill her. Laura shivered a little at his touch and watched him over the rim of her glass. This was not a new thing for him to do. He had done it before, though would have denied petting the President's feet if ever asked, but now…she was just so much more _aware_ of everywhere he touched and how he was doing it.

One side of his mouth was tugged up into a crooked smirk.

The bastard was well aware of what he was doing.

She narrowed her eyes at him but allowed her attention to be dragged away to spat number 6,784 between Colton and Edric.

"I don't have to drink." Colton appeared in the doorway, lab coat slung over one shoulder dressed in her borrowed tanks and pants and her hands hitched on her waist.

"You're a Geminon from the North and you're turning down a drink when it's freely offered. Something's not right." Edric gestured at her with the glass.

"You're right, it could have been worse." Bill murmured. "They could have been speaking to one another up there." He jerked his head at them and Laura shared his smile.

"All things considered, it's the best conference I've ever been to in which the phrase 'I may be a hybrid but you'll always be stupid' has been used and no blood has been drawn." Laura settled deeper into the couch and allowed herself to be soothed by the merry hell his fingers were playing on her feet. "Political or otherwise."

"They found out you're part Cylon and you're still the President. The world didn't end -again- and no Cylons turned up to activate us as glowing red eyed sleeper agents." Bill agreed.

"Always a win in my book." Laura raised her glass and then drank deeply if a little sardonically.

"It's not like it's a sign of the apocalypse, Edric. That's already happened." Colton brushed past Edric and back into the room. She dropped the lab coat over the back of a chair and reached up to start unwinding her hair from its knot on top of her head. Everyone was mildly surprised when it unravelled to its full length and fell to her waist. She scrunched her fingers through it at her scalp and appeared to work to hold back her temper.

"It's out of character, that's all I'm saying." Edric tried to offer her the glass again. She relented on a sigh and took it from him. "See! Now you're humouring me. You _never_ humour ANYONE."

Colton's jaw clenched and she levelled the glass at him threateningly. "If this wasn't the last drink in the galaxy you'd be wearing it!" She slapped the glass down on the table and hissed an irritated breath out through her teeth. "I'm going to my lab and those guards had _better_ not bloody follow me!" She moved to the hatch and threw it open with a flick of her wrist. Storming down the corridor with her irritated snap at the guards echoing behind her.

Edric sighed, set his glass down and moved to the hatch.

"Excuse us." He said with exaggerated manners and shut the hatch quietly behind him.

"Well…just in case we were ever in danger of a quiet life." Laura mused.

"Hmm," Bill stroked a little higher up her legs, just past her ankles now, working up towards the tense muscle of her calf. "Alone at last."

"Bill…"

"Laura." He returned to her sardonically.

"We shouldn't." She tried to remind him.

"We want to."

"You can't always get what you want."

"No, but I'm pretty sure we can get what we need." He tightened his hold on her legs and dragged her a little closer, leaning forward to close the distance between them even further.

"Need is it?" She had to stop flirting with him. She really did. She sat up too, inches apart now. She blindly put the glass down on the table, never breaking eye contact with him. It should have been uncomfortable, holding his gaze like this, but it wasn't. They were swimming in each other's eyes. Blending together and enjoying the immersion. They had been resonating along the same wavelength for quite some time now and the time had come to acknowledge it. Maybe they would have gotten around to it eventually had the nanotech never happened, Laura doubted it though, it would have taken intervention of a Scripture sort in order to get them to say it out loud.

But the nanotech had happened and now they weren't skirting around it or denying it anymore. If that curtain hadn't drawn back when it had, if they had been left alone in the dim light for even a few seconds longer…Laura liked to think that she would have moved them to a more secluded spot, but she wasn't _sure._

"Need." He nodded at her, his hand coming up and sliding around her neck, dragging her closer still. "Definitely need."

No, no, no, no, no…

Laura was up and off the couch and pacing about the room like a caged tiger.

"We can't!"

Bill heaved a sigh and flopped back down onto the couch onto his back. He growled at the ceiling and made an abbreviated twisting motion with his hands when Laura's back was turned. He drew himself up on his elbows and turned to her in time to see her wringing her hands and looking anywhere but at him.

"I assure you that I am fully functional." He drawled and she shot him a narrow eyed look. "Even before the nanotech." He grinned a wide and wolfish grin.

He received The Look in reply.

He sighed and swung his feet onto the floor. Pursing his lips and pondering how best to talk her into bed. He supposed he could just pick her up and carry her there, but she'd fight him and then there would be shrieking involved and he'd have to stifle her with…hot and steamy kisses.

He wasn't seeing a downside so far. He got to his feet and a wicked smirk appeared over his mouth. Her eyes widened and she backed off several feet.

"Oooooh no." She told him sharply.

"Ooooh yes." He prowled towards her, stepping up and over the coffee table instead of bothering with going around.

"Now, Bill, let's think about what's going on here." Laura held up her hands to ward him off. It felt a lot like she was playing to an audience that wasn't there, but a token effort was called for she thought.

"Tired of thinking. " He growled low in his throat and stalked towards her. She shimmied backwards rapidly on bare feet and his smile widened when her back hit the wall and she had nowhere else to go. He walked right up to her and planted a hand on either side of her head, caging her in his arms. "I really want to be doing."

"Anyone in particular?" Laura shut her eyes. She did NOT just say that.

He growled. A real and proper growl that would have put a lion to shame.

Apparently she had just said that.

"You know who. I want you." His fingers flexed against the steel bulkhead and his body arched towards hers before he reined himself in and managed to draw back a few inches. If this was going to work, he'd be damned if he was making the first move. "Now kiss me."

"Excuse you?"

"You heard. Kiss me." He lowered his head so their lips were barely an inch apart. "Take the step, Laura. I'm right here."

The decision stretched taught between them.

**$inister $cribe**

Colton strode along the hallway. The bulkheads and corridors splitting off and blurring in front of her vision. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked faster. She felt cold. She felt sick.

She felt trapped.

She needed to go.

Somewhere. Anywhere. She didn't know. She just needed to get off _Galactica_ right now. The walls were closing in on her. The people babbling at her. She could hear them all. Everywhere. She had to get out.

She had to get out right now!

Colton stopped in the corridor a wild look in her eyes and she swallowed hard. Her eyes caught on something. A sign painted on the bulkhead in helpful white block capitols.

LAUNCH BAY à

If she wanted off. Colton thought that a shuttle would be a really good place to start. She looked behind her. She could sense Edric storming down the corridor. They always knew where the other was. It was a thing.

But everything had to have a range.

She had to hurry.

**$inister $cribe**

"Well?" Every cell in Bill's body was straining towards the woman pinned between his arms. He _knew_ it wasn't one sided but she was doing a very good impression that it was.

"Don't rush me." She hedged.

"Rush you?" His hands fisted against the wall. He wanted to slam his hand through it. "It's been three years. Three LOOOONG years. I've wanted you since the first moment I clapped eyes on your annoying Presidential tush and you want to make me wait?"

"Annoying?" Laura frowned at him.

"You're avoiding the issue."

"Oh, I'm an issue now?"

"Very much so." He growled at her.

"I think you might have issues but they're ALL your own." She tried to fold her arms over her chest. Couldn't, because her suit was too tight and his chest was in the way, so she flapped them about and then dropped them to her side again.

"You're going to make me do it, aren't you?"

"Do wh-umf!" Laura clattered back against the wall, pinned there by Bill's mouth and the full length of his body. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her spine arched in pleasure and…

Her ears screamed in pain when the wail of the ship's siren pierced them like a hot blade.

Cylon contact.

Fantastic.

**Dun-de-dun-DUN!!!**

**To be continued…**


End file.
